


Listening

by LionessOnYourBack



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: matt needs quiet time, there isn't any fighting in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 21:28:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3870385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LionessOnYourBack/pseuds/LionessOnYourBack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes you just have to stop and listen to the world around you, not to see what you can do for it, but to take a moment to catch your breath.  You can’t run all the time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Listening

**Author's Note:**

> They told me to keep trying, so here I am, posting another story. Lets see what my writing self-esteem does under its rock...

Matt sat down on the bench in front of the church. Father Lantom had only just gone back inside and would probably take another few moments to come back out.

Matt quirked a smile, the Father wasn't actually going back into the church, just standing in the doorway. His face was turned up, Matt could only guess that his eyes were closed, the detail to small, especially from this distance.

Matt's slight smile grew, the Father was just standing in the sun. Peaceful moments had become rare for him. He sighed and tilted his own head back, not to feel the sun, he was sitting in the shade, but to stretch out with his senses.

The tree that had him in shade was rocking back and forth in the breeze, the leaves rustling softly. Higher up there were at least two nests, one had a parent sitting on their eggs, also being rocked in the breeze. The soft rustling lulling the bird to sleep. Even now Matt could hear its fluttering heart slowing down enough to let the bird drift off. Matt relaxed a little as the bird did.

He followed the breeze around the church and came across a cat that was up on top of the church yard wall. It's breathing was deep and the heart beat allow, already asleep in such a nice afternoon.

Father Lantom left the doorway and headed back down to the street, Matt didn't shift from his relaxed position as the man got closer. Another smile tugged at his lips. How long had it been since the Father had seen him like this? How long had it been that he'd allowed himself to be this relaxed?

Father Lantom sat down next to him, but didn't say anything, just sat there. Pulse normal, breathing calm. He wasn't even looking at Matt, he was looking up again. At this distance Matt could get a vague sense of his eyes and that they were cast up too.

As normal as breathing, that is, from one inhale to the next Father Lantom opened his mouth and spoke, it almost startled Matt…almost.

“There used to be two families of birds in the tree that shades this bench. One of them is still up there, a new set of eggs every season. It's odd sometimes, who stays and who goes. Those two bird families always seemed to sing to each other, and then when the one left the remaining pair didn't sing for so long, but they did start singing again."

He turned and smiled at Matt, who blinked behind his glasses.

"Are you being cryptic, Father?"

"Do you need me to be cryptic?"

Matt smiled at that. Why couldn’t a story about song birds, told by his priest, be just that, a story about song birds? Matt lived so much of his own life as one thing when he was really so much more.

Stick had very nearly beaten it into him that there was no time to just sit and be and let the world wash over him, especially not after he'd started only listening for all of the bad things.

It was a nice change to just sit in the shade, his priest next to him, not worried about him for once, a story of song birds moving on from a sad farewell still on his mind. Said song bird trilling out as its mate landed near it. The cat on the church wall had also gotten up at some point and was moving around to the front of the building. It might come all the way out to the street if it kept on its current path. Though it was clearly unhurried in its pace.

"So?" Father Lantom said. "Got any stories you can tell and old man?"

Matt shifted in his seat to be facing the priest better and smiled at him, "Do you want to hear about the time my roommate in college removed all of my furniture from our dorm room?"

Father Lantom laughed and Matt started, slipping in some pieces that no normal blind man would know, but he knew this man and knew he would never say. Matt relaxed more as he told the tale, letting the world of Hell's Kitchen wash over him, but not allowing it to wash him away. He focused on the Father before him, laughing as he pleased during the retelling, the song birds above singing softly to one another, and that cat, who had stopped just short of the sidewalk and was now hiding somewhere not far behind Father Lantom, ears turned toward him and listening.

Listening, maybe Matt needed to do that more often, and not just for all of the worst that the world has to offer, but moments like this one too, where the world seems to pause and let everyone catch their breath.


End file.
